Cinderella and the Compulsive Scrapbooker
by JK writer
Summary: Marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be. Join EllaCinder on her wonderous journey of love, life, and ..uhh, Happiness! Yes, that works. Happiness.
1. Chapter 1

This story starts a looonnggg time ago, in a country far, far, far away. There was a young maiden who dreamed of her perfect wedding. Her name was EllaCinder. Some of you know her as Cinderella, but that is WRONG. Time has changed the story so that you gentle reader will no longer know the facts. We're here to change that.

EllaCinder sat in the window as she did her darning. Her feet got cold when her socks had holes in them, so she was darning them. Her gaze turned to the outside and she started to humm. Darning was so boring that her mind usually turned to other things. Like as not, it was often of a wedding that she daydreamed about.

* * *

"Cinderella, you moron!" complained her husband. "Will you stop making up weird stories and telling them to the mice?"

Cinderella sighed, annoyed. Perhaps her fictional EllaCinder's wedding would go just as she had daydreamed, but hers left much to be desired. The ceremony was just fine, she supposed, but it was a huge disappointment to find that the love of her life Prince Charming just couldn't understand her desire- no! Her need to befriend small animals.

"Besides," she huffed, "not doing so goes against my Disney heroine contract."

"I'm almost finished with this page," her husband said happily. He held up a very carefully made scrapbook. "See? It has a little kitty on the corner of that page!"

Cinderella smiled slightly. It -was- a very cute little paper kitty.

Inside she was wincing. God, how she hated paper kitties. What she wanted was a real kitty. But noo, P.C. was allergic to small animals and household pets so she wasn't allowed to have one. Instead she got paper kitties. And a husband who scrapbooked. Cinderella sighed as she stood up.

"Hooneeeyy," she whined, "let's go DO something. One of the villagers is having a quaint little BBQ. Let's go to that. And you could use a shower instead of wasting the rest of that day with that book. Remember that we agreed that you weren't going to spend more than 3 hours a day working on that!"

"Huh, what? What did you say Cinds? I missed it. You should know better than to talk to me when I'm putting finished pages back into my book. It's a very delicate process not to bend anything or smear it!" Prince-y poo said to Cinderella.

"I hate it when you call me Cinds."

"Really?" The Prince asked, mildly surprised. "I referred to you as 'Cinds' at least five times in this scrapbook. Maybe a few other times in other books." He searched his desk and person for white-out.  
"You are MUCH too obsessed with scrapbooking!"

Cinderella was just opening her mouth to say the very same thing when it came from a whole different voice in the doorway. The king.

"Am I to hand over MY kingdom to one who can't tear himself away from... snap shots and pretty pieces of paper?" The king asked angrily.

"Ummm..." the prince thought for a while, "that's how I always thought it worked..."

While the prince was speaking the king was slowly turning various shades of red. He seemed to also have trouble breathing. Cinderella rushed to his aid, and to his side.

"Well, like DUH, Mr. Princealingling! It soo is not going to work like that. You have to, like earn the kingdom. You are such a DUMMY! Now put the scrapbook away and leave it alone. I need you to go on a quest for me." Cinderella had only started her rant, only to be cut off by the king.

"What a good idea Cinderella. My son will go on a quest. A quest for... umm, a quest for...uhh..."

"Suggestion!" the prince interjected. "Can my quest be for white-out? Because I seriously need to fix this now that I know that she doesn't want to be called Cinds."  
The king settled down a little bit, probably a little tired of being angry. "I suppose you are a tad too hopeless of a case for a quest. So instead I will send the two of you out to the world on your own for three weeks."

"Three weeks?!" the prince asked, stunned, "Why?"

"Because I see now that my son does not have a realistic perspective of the world, which he needs if he will ever rule this kingdom." The king answered.

"...But..." Cinderella stumbled over worlds, "I just moved in here and I just started adjusting to not having to always clean, and sew, and..."

The king offered no sympathy. "We all have to make sacrifices sometimes."

Cinderella once again found herself plotting different ways she could dispose of all of her husband's scrapbooking junk. This make her feel strangely happy at times.

"Say Cheeeeeese!"

Cinderella and the king barely had a chance to turn their heads to look at the prince before being blinded by a flash.  
"That one was definitely a keeper," remarked the prince, "The Day That Cinds-uhhh...derella and I got temporarily kicked out of the castle. Oh! I know exactly what the page will look like!"

"Don't worry, Cindy," the king said sympathetically to his daughter-in-law, "it's just for three weeks."

"I am Cin-der-ELLA!" the newly wed bride corrected before going to pack her things.

* * *

"Well, here we are. All this hut thanks to you." Cinderella continued on with a sigh, "Three weeks of living here with basically nothing, and NO SCRAPBOOKING! Ok? Can you do that for me, my love?" The prince stood there gaping for a minute. "You look like a fish, dear. Oh well, I suppose we can compromise here. You can take ONE roll of film a day to be developed when we get back to the castle. Does that work for you?" querried the Mrs. as she swept the dirt floor. "Oh! And for right now, can you hang those pictures up on the wall for me. That's a dear."

After a while longer of listening to the prince mumble, stutter and gape, he finally got to unpacking the memories. Oh, and he agreed to the terms set before him by his dictator wife. What a marriage.

Twitch.  
That's what his eye was doing. It was twitching. All on it's own. It was seeing no pretty paper. Where did the pretty paper go? He needed his pretty paper.

So the prince looked like he was about to do something crazy- something desperate even. His eyes showed pure madness and his shoulders heaved as his breathing got more and more shallow. Sweat was starting to appear at his brow.

So he pulled out his camera, turned the lense around towards him and shot a self-portrait at arm's length. "Hahaha... remember the time I went crazy after spending FOREVER away from my scrapbooking?"

"It's been about fifteen minutes since we left the castle and found this hut." Cinderella corrected. She looked at the sun, "Sorry, 20, actually. You know, you could save some of that money you use on film to get me a watch."

The prince's eye twitched. AGAIN.

"oohkay then, let's forget about that. Not that a watch wouldn't come in handy, but we're moving on past that. Alright then. I think I am done with the inside here for now. I am going to go out and enjoy all the little animals. I love them. I could hug them to death! My swookem wookems!!" Squealed Cinderella.

"Geeze, not that again." muttered the prince under his breath. "Uhh, Ella, could you get some lunch while you are out? You know, nip over to the palace kitchens and get us some food. OHH, and my markers, and some paper, and uhh... ok with that look that you are giving me how about just some food? No? Whyever not?! They can't expect us to find, clean, and cook our food! That's the palace's job! Honestly, Ella, please?!" During the whole rather long question from the prince, one would not believe that he had only stopped for a breath once.

Next thing the prince knew, a squirrel was being thrown at his head. The squirrel obviously didn't care much for being thrown and the prince definitely didn't like being mauled by his wife's animal friends, so after a lot of flailing around the little critter was scampering out of the hut. The prince glared at Cinderella, who was looking away, whistling.

"What?" she asked.

"I know you threw that squirrel."

"Me?" Cinderella scoffed, "I'm under Disney heroine contract, I would never treat one of my forest animal friends in such a manner."

The Prince eyed his wife warily before pulling out his camera and shooting another self portrait. "And this was the time that I was mauled by a squirrel." He turned around the camera to get a shot of Cinderella, "And this is-" he trailed off as he got an excellent shot of a rabbit flying at him in midair.  
After that hilarious episode. The prince sat, hugging his scrapbook, rocking back and forth.

"Give the scrapbooking a break," Cinderella said cooly, "or face the wrath of more friendly jungle animals."

"Err, don't you mean forest animals?" Asked the prince as he raised his hands up in the air, "Not that it really matters either way, just-thought-you-might-want-to-be-correct-though!" Prince Charming quickly stood up with his scrapbook still in his arms and ran out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

"-And then EllaCinder got out her flamethrower and the scrapbooks were never seen again..." Cinderella said to the mice that scurried around, not really listening to what the Disney heroine was trying to tell them. At one point, one of the mice- probably quite a bit dumber than the others- stopped scurrying and stood on it's hind legs gawking at Cinderella. It was having this captive audience member that inspired Cinderella to throw a flamethrower into the story.

The prince moved his arm to protect his current scrap-booking project from his wife as he listened to her story. By the time she had finished, he realized he was using his whole body to protect it.

"Hey..." Cinderella said as she realized that there was a man standing outside of their hut, "how long has that guy been there?"

"I'd say he's been standing there for a good hour or so." The prince answered.

Cinderella rolled her eyes at her incompetent husband, rose, and went to the entrance of the hut. "Hello! Is there something we can help you with?"

"You can start by getting out of my house and letting my family and I get back in!" the man replied irritably.

Cinderella spun to face her husband. "Why did you take someone's hut without asking?"

"I don't know," the prince answered lamely, frowning on a smudge that was on one of his pictures. "The hut was empty so I figured it was up for grabs."

"I am SO SORRY" Cinderella apologized. She gathered her things, her mice, and her husband and left.

Unfortunately for her, the prince grabbed his scrap booking things.

"This time I'm deciding where we stay..." Cinderella said as she made her way down familiar roads.

"Where are we going?" the prince asked.

"To my old house." Cinderella answered.

"Your old house? You mean with your wicked stepmother and stepsisters? Would they really be okay with us staying there?"

"Well," Cinderella answered, "no."

--

Cinderella was surprised. She had no idea the walls of her stepmother's place where so thick and hallow.

"This is surprisingly quite comfortable" commented the prince as he realized that he did have some room for scrap booking.

Cinderella cringed as her husband's things began to take up a lot of her friends' space.

She could put up with this scrapbooking for a bit now...

...because she's with her old mice friends. The same mice friends who had been there when she had needed them the most. From "back in the day". Yeah, those mice.

Cinderella was sad to hear that all her other friends from then were dead, as she learned from gossiping among the mice. The prince was ignoring her completely as he was enthralled by his scrapbooking.

The scrapbooking and squeaking (gossiping) went on for a few hours before the prince got bored and started to whine.  
"Ells, I'm hungry. When are we going to eat? And for that matter, where are we going to go to the bathroom at? Or take baths? Or make heirs? And when, on that last part? I'm not getting any younger, you know!" He kept nattering on at Cinderella until she could hardly stand it.

"You should have thought about all those things BEFORE you got us booted out of the castle." Cinderella scolded. "And I'll have you know that my mice friends are very generous hosts. Have some cheese. Oh, and more cheese!"

The prince nibbled the cheese with a pouty expression. He really hated cheese.

"You have a point with the whole bathroom thing..." Cinderella continued, "we can't just go anywhere like our friends here," she smiled and patted a few mice on the head. "I guess we'll have to sneak outside for that business."

The prince fidgeted, not liking this situation at all. "...and baths?"

"You should have thought of that before you even THOUGHT of starting a scrapbook." Cinderella said coolly.

"I was supposed to think about how would I bathe if someday I am stuck living in a wall with a bunch of mice before I started scrap booking?"

Cinderella looked thoughtful for a second.

"Yes." she replied. "Yes, you should have thought of that."

The prince caught a small sound of tittering coming from around them.

"They're laughing at me now, aren't they?" he asked.

Cinderella only nodded.

"And, err, the very last thing I mentioned? Does it not concern you too?" he said as he shrugged off the hulimation of being laughed at by mice. The poor prince looked as if he were going to strangle the mice eventually, but if Cinderella responded positively, he thought that he could be the "better man" and just ignore them. Though it was a very hard thing to do.

Cinderella was silent for a very long time and the prince started to fidget. "Will you just answer my question!" he exclaimed.

"I'm THINKING!" was the screeching reply he got. She pondered for a bit longer and found an acceptable answer for her prince. "I believe that we can procreate once you give up that silly scrapbooking habit of yours. Good enough for you? Seriously darling, you say you're getting older but your actions say differently!"

"Fiiinnnee," whined the prince. "But I still have to pee then! Since I can't use my wood any other way!"

Cinderella rolled her eyes. "That's why the Powers that Be created bushes. Just don't let anyone see you go out there."

The prince stared at Cinderella, desperate to find trace of joking around in her expression. Finding that she was actually serious, he sighed and headed for the exit.

Cinderella watched him exit, then turned to the mice.

"Doesn't that scrapbook look tasty, everyone?" she said, a vicious grin growing on her face.

This, unlike storytime, captured the attention of the mice and they began approaching the scrapbook and nibbling on the corners of the pages.

"You know, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," the prince commented as he reentered. "Unlike toilets, you don't really have to worry about aiming so much. You'd think that-" He interuppted his town sentence suddenly with a high pitched scream when he saw the mice snacking on his scrapbook pages. He ran forward, chased the mice away, and cradled the scrapbook in his arms. "It's okay! It's okay! I'm here!"

"Prince Charming saves the day again." Cinderella commented dryly.

"How could this happen? Look!" he held out the scrapbook in Cinderella's face. "Look! My pages have horrible bite marks all over the edges." He collapsed to the ground. "I can't go on!"

Cinderella watched her husband sob loudly on the ground. "Hey, be quiet, they're going to hear you."

The price didn't seem to hear her as his sobbing continued to grow in volume.

"Is it just me" said a voice from the other side of the wall, "Or do you hear one of those stupid mice… crying?"

"Come to think of it…" started another voice.

"Shit!" Cinderella cursed, putting her Disney princess contract aside temporarily. She quickly snatched her greiving husband from the ground and made for the exit.

--

They walked in silence for a while. The prince still clutching the offended scrapbook and looking reasonably devastated.

"Look," said Cinderella, "at least now you can always remember the time we lived with mice in the wall of our old home."

The prince smiled a little bit, "Yeah, and I peed outside and it wasn't so bad."

Cinderella laughed a little bit then refocused on thinking about where they could possibly live next.


End file.
